Waveform source coding and decoding (codec) is widely used in early digital mobile communication systems such as the Personal Handyphone System (PHS). Due to technology limitations at the time of implementation, some of the system designs did not provide appropriate channel encoding/decoding to protect the transferred data. For such systems, when the channel quality condition degrades, the ensuing high bit error rate makes voice performance unacceptable and some important control bits are easily corrupted. As the result, upper layer protocol and control mechanisms in the system would be likely active to turn off the channel. This is one of the most prevalent reasons for a lost connection during an ongoing communication session.
There are adaptive multi-rate (AMR) vocodec and corresponding channel coding capabilities in some advanced 2G mobile systems and all the 3G systems. Under the AMR standard, there are 8 different data rates for code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) speech codec. These data rates range from 12.2 kbps to 4.75 kps. The more speech information is transferred, the better the voice performance is achieved. The basic approach employed in the AMR standard is that when the channel condition become worse, the system uses the modes with lower data transfer rate (of course, the voice performance is worse.). This saves more channel bandwidth and other resources for the system to increase the bit error correction ability. The lack comparable technology in legacy digital mobile systems (such as PHS) derives from under-developed algorithms and the expense of integrated circuit resources related to power and instruction speed requirements. With the advent of silicon technology, the use of digital signal processors (DSP) is no longer a luxury element in a PHS handset.
It is therefore desirable to make use of AMR vocodec capability in legacy systems.
It is also desirable to apply AMR and error correction in a manner which can be retrofit into early 2G systems by re-arranging bit mapping to provide up to 6 to 7 dB gain for bit error reduction ability for certain AMR modes.